Having played a demo of MoM and having bought it at PAX, I am very excited to run my first game tonight! However, I think I've hit a snag...

I noticed that with the random drawing of tiles it is possible to get a combination lock that cannot be solved. So what do we do if that happens? Does that just mean not looting the suitcase, or no getting through locked doors?

If swapping adjacent pieces doesn't help, then drawing a new piece should do the trick. In the oddball case that there are no more tiles available, then you're SOL until more tiles become available.

Mind, however, that taking a new piece from the stack counts as one move and selecting the piece it replaces is another one. Forgot to say that and kinda annoyed one of my players when he wanted to just skim through the pile of pieces until he finds a perfect fit...

(Tiles not used are being put back to the pile, so "no tiles left" only appears if you have several puzzles of the same type "active" at the same time.)

Is this covered in the rules?

Yeah.

Page 18, top left. Possible Moves: Swap, Rotate and Draw. Draw = random piece of unused pieces, replace any piece in play.

Or, if you were talking about the "if no pieces are available": page 25, about Puzzle Pieces.

Yeah, I'm a dummie. I must have looked at that section a million times and just missed it. It hardly mattered. They made it past the final lock with no problem at all.

Elbi said:

This is not technically true. Replacing a piece costs 2 actions. It is not separated into two actions costing 1 each.

Wow, I completely missed that it cost two actions to replace a tile. Investigators beware!

I'll admit (to my shame ) I missed that too in my first game. Not saying that's why I lost as Keeper, but still... Sucks for an anal-retentive rule freak like me to a miss something like that .

Hmmm... well, yeah, technically the rule states that "this move counts as two actions" and that's it.
I just had a player with one move (and only one piece wrong on the Suitcase) left and made the "picking the new piece + placing it" on the fly, seems like that stuck to my brain. The problem is that 6A and 6B can only be solved by dscarding the pieces and rotating them, since they are never adjecent. So telling him that no, he can't use his last action for ANYTHING was kinda annoying, even to me. Not being able to swap two PERFECT pieces is a pain in the butt, imho. Being forced to quit with an unspent action, only to know that you MIGHT need it later... nah, not my cup of tea.